The Untimely Death of Miss SaraBeth
by division-ten
Summary: A mysterious television message by a college student prompts an investigation for a man named "Aizen" spanning hundreds of lives and all three planes of existence: the realm of the Living, Soul Society, and even Hueco Mundo. Who was she? Why did she die?
1. Prologue 0 1: A Survey of the Aftermath

This is D-10, with my first work here on ff net. I'm here to totally screw with the BLEACH-verse, but, trust me, I don't own it. It would look a bit more like the following if I did.

Divergent future just before Ichigo and company jump into Hueco Mundo- but quite a bit of back-story has been ret-conned (Hitsugaya, Matsumoto, Momo) or added to (Grimjow, Kurosaiki Masaki, Renji… et al). Expect to see what the universe has become revealed to you rather slowly.

And so, it begins.

**The Untimely Death of Miss Sara-Beth**

**Prologue 0.1: A Survey of the Aftermath**

**(September 22, 2008 12:00 GMT)**

_My name is Sara-Beth. I'm twenty-one, as of today, and for all you know I am dead. I'm sorry I left everyone behind. Sorry that I never said anything. I'm not really all that sorry about writing over every television station in existence to tell all of you this message, but I really had no other way to do it. Not that I'm the one actually doing this right now. I had one of my kuoin friends take care of it. This isn't live. It was made a short while after the incident, but it's been a whole day and a half already, and I've heard it's put the whole planet in a state of confusion._

_For those of you who got stuck in that hollow desert, I heard all of you were evacuated to safety. It's only because of me that all of you got dragged into that mess in the first place. And now, each and every one of you who were abducted can see the walking dead among our planet, like "monsters" appearing at random, and almost as spontaneously, humans or anthropomorphs arriving to cut them down. For the majority of the planet, who cannot see such visions, do not belittle your neighbor- those visions are real. Some of the latter have prepared a speech that will be presented via television later, like my own, using recording equipment that should allow anyone to see and hear them._

_I ask only one thing of all of you: don't- for the love of all that is freakin' holy, don't- think of committing suicide now that you know there is an afterlife. Think of life as a really, really big traffic circle- one that runs through three states. There are a couple points of entry and exit, too. All of you are riding in a car on autopilot. The car gets onto the traffic circle in one of the three states and heads either clockwise or counter. Your car could have gotten on the circle in the realm of the Living, which is a misnomer, because as long as you are on this circle you're alive. The common term for it is Aieko, which means 'mass'._

_Eventually, this car will get to a point where it can stay on the circle, entering a new state, or take the off-ramp. If your car is going clockwise, regardless of what you've bee doing, you go to the Soul Society. Heaven- in quotes, mind you. People from there call it Medja, or "energy"._

_If you were going counter, you would eventually have the same problem, but you'd be heading for a completely different next life. Called Hueco Mundo, Hell, The Barren, this place is no more hell than the other Heaven. It's just a name. There's no God-given right that sends you to one or the other. And there's also the option of an off-ramp, too._

_Know this: all three places have an on ramp. You can be born in "Heaven", and die there, only to end up here. That's why religion still persists: we know what is on the traffic circle, but not where the on and off ramps go. And we don't know how our cars are programmed, or if our actions do change what path we take._

_What I'm saying is, don't take away our life thinking you'll meet up with your beloved dead, or that the life you have now is not worth living. The circle we know well, but those off-ramps could lead to paradise, mud, or nothing at all._

_Then why am I being such a hypocrite? Throwing my life away?_

_Because I'm already dead._

_I died before I even hit elementary. I cannot say the details, but my very existence is a physical impossibility. One that outside forces were trying to use. If I say any more, I will be putting countless lives in danger in all three realms, and maybe even the beyond._

_I am already dead. Find out for yourself how, if you wish. Just know that the dead need to stay that way, where they belong._


	2. Prologue 0 2: The Reference Point

**Prologue 0.2: The Reference Point**

**(September 21, 2008 0:30 EST)**

My name is Justin. I am twenty-two years old, a recent college graduate, and, current events notwithstanding, spending the weekend in northern-central New Jersey enjoying the weekend with a friend of mine who just turned twenty-one today.

And did I mention, trying to figure out _what the hell just happened_?

So there we were, at the new Devil's stadium- front row!- jamming to a concert, when, for all of a split second, the electricity shorted out. A moment later, the lights flickered back on, but something wasn't right. I was at the end of the row, and right in the aisle, next to some guy selling popcorn and beer, was a young woman, hair pulled into a tight bun. Wearing some freaky-ass clothing. And a sword. A sword! Wouldn't the security have seen it? She clenched her jaw tightly, and to my left, my friend twitched, nervously pushing the bridge of her glasses further up her nose. She grabbed my hand coarsely. She looked afraid. Of the woman to my right with the sword?

The people around us looked at the sword-girl with the same sense of disdain, and, in the stadium, I spotted two others dressed identically to her. They all wore straw sandals with socks, loose black pants (or was it a skirt?) tied with a white bow, loose-sleeved black shirts of some sort, a vest with a bungee cord on one side and a slit on the other, with an image of a devil on the back, and a shoulder bag with an diamond shaped emblem slung over one shoulder and clipped around the waist. The bag hung on the opposite hip of the sword, presumably on the dominant hand side of the person wearing it.

Sara let go of my hand, peering over me at the woman with the sword, clicking her tongue between her front teeth in a bunch of loose, then rapid clicks. The other girl jerked her head to the left, stared at the two of us for the tiniest of moments, and jumped about thirty feet into the air, unsheathing her blade. As if on cue, a giant… creature… emerged from overhead- sliding through the stadium as if it were made of water, and not even breaking a single beam.

The beast was massive, but before anyone could move, or I could even get a clear, solid view of it- as if the world were in slow-mo for a split second- she swung her blade in one clean sweep, and the beast disintegrated as quickly as it had arrived.

Then the screaming started. The band dropped their instruments and tried to flee, and everyone ran towards the exits. Sara gabbed my hand, as well as those of her two concert-seat neighbors sitting to her left, holding us down with all her strength, trying to yell at us over the chaos. The drown of screams silenced her out, but she managed in preventing all _three_ of us from moving, despite being the shortest in the group.

A moment later, the whole room became silent and frozen. A pin could have dropped, and we would all have heard it. Sara, still having all of us in our grip, was mumbling the last of something under her breath I could neither quite make out nor understand. She let go, and I realized I was also unable to move. I could breathe, move my head, and blink, but my body was frozen in a state of extreme panic. I tried out my voice, but it had been silenced. It was like someone pressed the pause button on the chase scene of an action flick. And, yet, _she_ was moving. Both my friend and the crazy sword-swinging chick from before.

The latter remained in her position, overhead, just sort of floating on the air in the middle of the stadium/rink. She pulled out a bullhorn from… somewhere, and began to speak.

"Apologies for the spell, everyone. My name is Sato Tomomi, and I'm… well, I'm not quite sure how to explain this one. I'm a Grim Reaper."

Panic struck, like an invisible wave. Another one of the massive creatures phased into the building, and one of the other two people in the same garb quickly dispatched it. She continued, having sensed the fear in everyone around us.

"I'm not here to hurt anyone. I promise. I… well, to be honest, it was my night off and I came here to enjoy the concert. Until the power went out, I was invisible and completely undetectable to everyone here. So, uh, I sort of used the fact that I'm a ghost to sneak into the arena for free.

"Anyway, the other two dressed like me were actually working- that's Ishikawa who just took care of that Hollow- the big thing that just came in here, that would be a Hollow, not Ishikawa, he's pretty short- and the other one, he's Kiriguchi. Yeah, I'm aware none of us are Japanese. I'm not going to get into details as to how the afterlife works, but… well, we need to get you guys out of here. Hopefully without the panicking. I'm going to take off the spell that's binding everyone, okay, so please, for those of you who got to the exits and saw where all of us are, please just go back to your ticketed seat. We'll evacuate everyone properly.

"For those of you not near an exit, this entire building's been transplanted into, well, what you might call 'purgatory', or somesuch. The giant creatures you saw (and, with what could be described as near-perfect timing, another beast zoomed into the stadium) make their home here." She drew her blade and the beast, like those before it, disintegrated. I'm not sure if I was in a state of shock, or pure awe, or if the situation had really begun to sink into my head. Regardless, I felt life returning to my body, and I collapsed back into my seat. Around the building, others did the same. I peered to my left, and Sara sat, head down, still mumbling. She looked up, towards the ceiling, and only then did the other girl begin to speak.

"Everyone, outside, there will be some more of the same creatures. However, these ones are not here to harm you. They will bring you all home. If there are families, please try to stay together. You _will be evacuated in sections_."

Our area was called. We all arose, dazed, some crying, many confused and panicked like rabbits being smoked out of their burrow. When we got to the fire exit, an entirely different group of people awaited us. Also carrying swords, but clad more in white, we were handed tattered strips of cloth and shown to tie them around our mouths and noses, with a few grunts as explanation, as if these people spoke no English, then pushed out into… the frigid blaze of a barren desert.

White everywhere, with a perpetually black sky. Sitting stark across the landscape were a number of bloated, white-bone-faced monstrosities (hollows? Hollows?) that the people clad in white were helping concertgoers onto, then, when one was full, giving the puss-beast a swift kick and the creature sped off through the sand fasted than anything of that size should feasibly be able to accomplish. I turned to my left to grab Sara's hand, but she was gone. Everyone was being funneled onto different animals to ride, so, while I got a slight chill in the back of my neck, I could only put faith into the situation and get assisted on the back of one of these creatures by a guy who looked like he was wearing cyan eyeliner, and had a giant tooth-adorned bone cowl on the right side of his face. Fashion sense aside, his attitude towards me really pissed me off. He looked at me with a piercing glare and snorted as he let one more on and kicked the beast in the ass.

You never did leave that place, did you, Sara?


End file.
